York Regional Police May Spread Names Of Impaired Drivers Across Social Media

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Naming And Shaming May Be The Newest Tactic To Prevent Impaired Driving

York Region is coming off one of the worst years of impaired driving deaths with nine people killed and 1,265 impaired driving incidents in 2016. This has prompted them to consider other methods to prevent people from getting behind the wheel while impaired.

Durham Regional Police currently publish the names of impaired drivers on their website, and York Regional Police want to follow suit, but take it a step further. “If we [published names] we’d be putting out a media release, we’d be putting it on our social media pages, on our website as well,” Constable Andy Pattenden said to CBC News.

Although there isn’t concrete evidence that this method is foolproof, it’s certainly a step in the right direction. Impaired drivers do not deserve to duck under the radar, and blasting their names online may help prevent the social media generation from doing something as stupid as driving impaired.

Statistics show that 85 per cent of impaired drivers in 2016 were men, and half ranged between 22-to-34 years old, exactly the demographic that spends majority of their day online.

What do you think of this idea? Is it something that Barrie Police and South Simcoe Police should adopt?